Saturday sees the return of rugby at Well Hall as Blackheath FC welcome Old Elthamians in round two of National League One fixtures.

Tries from Craig Dowsett, Tom Williams, Elliot Clements-Hill and Joe Tarrant secured an impressive 36-7 win at Esher in the season opener at the ground that has only harboured two wins in their last ten visits.

Despite the score-line Blackheath head coach James Shanahan marked his side’s performance as a B- and said there was ‘room for improvement’ ahead of their home derby.

“We went in a little undercooked after having our final preseason game cancelled, so we were scrappy, not as accurate as we should’ve been. We had three clear cut scoring chances in the first half and we threw 2 forward passes and a dropped ball,” said Shanahan before pointing out the positives.

“We made a lot of chances which is good, defensively we had one slip up which is a shame as we could’ve ‘nilled’ Esher, but for our first game, 5 points away from home is a huge result, especially at a place where we came unstuck last year.”

Josh Peters, Craig Dowsett, Mark Cooke and Jack Daly were singled out for their performances and Shanahan knows they’ll need another fine display on Saturday after Old Elthamians highly impressive 34-33 away win over Rotherham Titans.

“I’m expecting a tough game, they’ve made some good signings, they are well coached, and have aspirations of being a Championship club.”

“It’s down to who can handle their emotion best and execute their game plan on the day.”

“We’ve aspirations of finishing higher than our fifth-place finish last year and to do that we’ll need to keep our discipline, execute under pressure and take our chances.”

“It’ll be a very tight game and I expect a 1 score game.”